366 Timehr. 
This was all the doing of Mrs. Welecome—Queen, Koh-i-nur of Rest- 
house-keepers—who could make even the depressing atmosphere of 
“Mara” almost pleasant by her cheerful attendance and welcoming 
smile of ivory set in ebony. 
10.07. Sugar estate ‘‘ Mara ”—a pebble lefton the beach by the 
retiring tide of sugar—the only sugar estate left surviving so far*‘ up 
river.” 
10.50. Breakfast. An interval in observing quite essential even to 
the most ardent explorer. Note that ‘“ pepper pot” and “ matrimony ~ 
harmonise well with sueh occasions. 
12.50.“ Vigilante.” Sawmill of Mr: Mitchell Here the seene is 
made gay by 5 bateaux. This is a pleasant change. The river has 
been lonely and keeps lonely except when we stop.at some point, when 
a few corials or bateaux paddle out to us. The ‘‘ Mara ~ launch was an 
event. We see one raft of logs of timber drearily floating down stream, 
No life on the river; and ashore, an occasional hut by the waterside— 
always the dismal pimpler bush and Mocca-Mocca made gloomier still by 
the unmusical cry of the ‘ Canje Pheasant ” bewailing his habitat. 
BUT— 
1.10 p.m. Bartica Downs FIRST RISING GROUND. “ Turning 
Water” 1.40 p.m. So called from the numerous eddies that dimple the 
now clearer and darker waters of the river here. ‘“ Enchanted eddies,” if 
the legend be true, that here sank, under fire from Fort Nassau, some 
buecaneering vessels, some hundreds of years ago, the souls of whose 
turbulent crews still vex the dark quietude of the stream that engulphed 
them. 
Fort Nassau 1.45 p.m. marked by high cabbage palms. Says Hart- 
sinck: ‘In year 1666 a certain Captain or Owl of the Arrawacks, 
named Kakabaretje, who lived in the Abary, had arrived accidentally at 
Fort Nassau with some of his people for the purpose of trading, when a 
few English Privateers attacked the Fort in a barque of 10 guns. The 
Indians took refuge in the forest, but the Captain, to show his courage, 
remained with the whites. Being frightened, however, by the roaring of 
the guns, he crept into an empty sugar boiler which was lying in the 
store. Returning afterwards to his Indians, he reproached them for their 
cowardice, and boasted that he had saved the Fort in a great measure, 
by his valour.” 
Here saith the historian Rodway :— 
“Above the mouth of the Wieronje stood Pln. Peereboom, the 
property of the Patroon, while below the same creek was built a bloek- 
house called the house of Van Peere, not necessarily because any of the 
Patroons lived there, but that it represented the Colony House and was 
fitted for defence as a wooden Fort, against Indian raids. Fort Nassau 
